


the little things

by sweaters (cuimhl)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6186385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuimhl/pseuds/sweaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>snapshots, in no particular order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the little things

**Author's Note:**

> The chronology is inconsistent, so bear with me.  
> listen: [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVKXTkEB1r8)

 

Summer, hot and fast and fleeting.

Koushi huffs warm air and traps it in his hands, skin tingling like the crawl of firebugs - maybe if he opens his palms now, they will glow.

His heart grows heavy with perspiration and the weight of humidity, heavy forearms of the sky bearing down as the sun makes headway between the ash-grey of clouds. At the back of his neck is the label that he has forgotten to cut off again, and it irritates him as his bag jostles up and down.

He is running, as fast as his legs will carry him, simultaneously away and towards the very same thing.

In front, Daichi looks back, skin almost orange in the dismal lighting, but his smile is bright like pearls that divers would resurface, bloody-eared and short of breath to find.

_ The lights _ , he thinks, just as green blinks to red and Daichi is first over the road.

“You had a,” Koushi coughs, “headstart.” He hangs his head and braces his hands on his thighs, breathing hard. 

“Why did you run?” Daichi claps a gentle hand on his shoulder and Koushi’s knee buckles, briefly, not because it was a heavy slap but more to do with the way that his voice is earth-low and thoughtful, and Koushi files it away in his memory, wondering when was the last time he heard a voice like this.

Before his mouth can betray him with something utterly asinine, he flattens the line of his lips into a terse smile, teasing, “Just kidding.”

He slips from Daichi’s touch and runs, sprints, dashes towards the first lamppost up ahead because he hasn’t lost yet and, if he waits another moment, his resolve might break and all sorts of things might go wrong.

“You -”

Daichi breaks off in a mixture of frustration and amusement, hurrying to catch up. When he does, he fists a hand into the front of Koushi’s shirt and yanks it very lightly, soft gaze belying the warm nature behind his dangerous smile.

Koushi’s gut churns, unable to bite back the searing grin that eats away at his cheeks when he thinks of how Daichi stopped to wait for him. How Daichi would do anything if he thought something was wrong - but then again, he’d do that for everyone.

_ Nonetheless _ , he thinks. He’s just lucky to be here, in this moment right now.

  
  


\---

  
  


In their first year of college, Koushi surprises everyone by jumping into an arts major, mainly photography. Daichi, on the other hand, is studying law - “So I can take over the family business and have something to contribute,” he explains, the two times that Koushi asks, forgets, and asks again.

They’re at the same university, sharing the same dormitory, but Koushi can’t help feeling that they’re still too far apart.

Still, it would be infinitely harder if they did not have at least this much.

It’s a domestic lifestyle, of sorts - they share a bathroom with the dorm next door, the inhabitants of which are rarely home, so it’s like they have the place all to themselves.

“You didn’t turn the tap off,” Daichi says to him mock-accusingly as he passes by, Koushi sitting on the torn sofa with his polaroid camera, staring through the lens and snapping a quick photo of Daichi’s exasperated expression.

“Sorry,” he chimes cheerfully, and the sunlight returns to Daichi’s face like it had never left.

When he turns, padding away on socked feet to his desk, Koushi’s heart falls just a little. He wishes that Daichi’s eyes could belong to himself only, sometimes, but that’s a horribly selfish way to think and the last thing he wants is to be a fettering chain of liability.

When Daichi lifts an arm to scratch at the back of his neck, thoughtfully, Koushi catches a glimpse of the sliver of skin between the hem of his sweater and the edge of his boxers, capturing it in the lens of his camera with the afternoon sunlight cascading through the open window.

In his darkroom, he has rolls of film which have never seen the light - probably never will, because Koushi doesn’t intend to develop them, but neither is he willing to let the light ruin them. It’s all of Daichi, of course: Daichi with his hair stuck to his forehead after playing basketball outside, Daichi sleeping with dark eyelashes fanned over his cheek, Daichi and Daichi and Daichi.

Koushi presses two fingers to his lips to smother the smile that seeks to give away his impure pursuits, just as Daichi turns and gives him a look that expresses the utter disgust he has towards his homework, piled on the table.

Koushi agrees.

There are better things he could do with his time.

  
  


\---

  
  


The supermarket has always seemed a special place, at least when Koushi was seven and gap-toothed, playing hide-and-seek with Daichi between the aisles. Now, stuck between adolescence and young adulthood, Koushi fingers the labels hanging from the various products and bites down on a sigh.

Being told to buy something for dinner is difficult when he has the barest conception of cooking basics, and even though it’s not him doing the cooking, decision-making is already hard enough.

The preoccupation of his dilemma has him distracted until he walks to the cashier, still debating the merits of two different cans of soup, which is when he realises Daichi works the counter at this time and also that he is about ten metres down.

Apologising, Koushi retreats from a bewildered cashier - who seems nice enough, but he’s not  _ Daichi _ \- and leaps into line behind an elderly lady, waiting to be served.

“Suga,” Daichi’s eyebrows knit together and the faintest blush of embarrassment colours his neck. Koushi delights in it, fingers itching with a desire to capture it on his camera. He has an obsession with everything that is painfully, naturally Daichi, to the point where he’s actually concerned about his own wellbeing.

“What should I get? Help me,” Koushi implores, leaning forward provocatively and feeling powerful in his fowardness.

Daichi, forever dense and unassuming, ponders the question and in doing so, lifts a finger to his bottom lip and tugs. 

“Red onions,” he suggests at last, unaware of the way that Koushi’s heart is dying inside, bewitched. “Your mother likes them, right? Get her some leek, a tomato, I don’t know. What is she cooking?”

“What would you cook?” Koushi counters, brows raised.

Daichi grins. He’s always been the better chef out of the two of them, and this is his area of expertise. “Beef soup,” he replies quickly, eye twinkling.

That’s what Koushi’s mother makes that night, too, when he brings the ingredients home.

  
  


\---

  
  


Sawamura Daichi is the sort of boy who always looks immaculate outside, but when at home, he’s simply dressed and looks like all things warm.

Koushi whispers wishes into a dandelion outside, erecting for himself a temple that is utterly dedicated to Daichi: his hands which long to touch him, refrain; his lips, which burn to kiss him, smile. The four pillars are virtues and they cave and crumble whenever he comes within a five-foot radius of the boy, but Koushi pretends that he’s not a forest fire but a still lake, and he even deceives himself.

“Suga,” Daichi breathes, lips curling upwards as Koushi’s follow suit. “Come in,” he gestures.

Koushi likes to wear pressed shirts and baggy sweaters, but the look has nothing to combat the way that the tracksuit jumper hangs off of Daichi’s shoulders just so, and how he could look good in anything - suits, rags, even a loincloth.

They’re not dating, but Koushi likes to pretend they are.

He lets himself imagine, for a moment, that as they ascend the stairs to Daichi’s room, they will make out in between homework and tell each other secrets, forging plans for a future together. Then, because it’s unhealthy to get himself so hung up on extreme optimism, Koushi shoots down the idea and reminds himself that, no, Daichi doesn’t like him and probably never will in that way.

Still, he hopes, and he thinks that maybe,  _ maybe - _

“Which chapter are you on?” Daichi asks as he spreads their textbooks over the kneeling table in the centre of his bedroom, and Koushi lets his attention whittle down to homework, and homework only.

“Four,” he admits, laughing as Daichi shakes his head at him in incredulity.

They begin.

  
  


\---

  
  


At sixteen, Sugawara Koushi is fighting a losing battle with loving his best friend.

He busies himself with studies and volleyball and plays loud music to drown out the thoughts in his head. First it’s a lovestruck smile that comes to him, unbidden, whenever he thinks of him.

Then it’s heat pricking behind his eyes as he watches  _ him _ with other girls, other boys, anyone but him.

Then, well, Koushi learns to live with it like a thorn in his side, which on good days blooms into a brilliant rose of steady attraction and channels into positive energy, smart jibes and jokes, and on bad days it burns him like all the backfired plans he’s made to get over this infatuation.

He separates himself into pieces, metallic crystals which fall apart along the seams: this part, which loves Daichi, and that which is rational, which will see him through high school and college and a successful, normal life.

It doesn’t work.

  
  


\---

 

“Do you?” Koushi remembers asking, intoxicated, fluorescent lights spinning around his head.

“I do,” he thinks Daichi says, but it’s deafening inside and the bass beat of music thrums in his body too loud for him to make out the words.

“I do, too,” he agrees, or so he remembers his lips forming the words, hoping that they are talking about the same thing.

 

\---

 

On White Day, the year that Koushi is turning twenty-five, Daichi gives him a box of homemade chocolates.

Koushi raises his brow at him over the table in the centre of their dorm, battling the smile that rises to his lips in unsuppressable mirth, and Daichi flushes prettily.

It’s a promise, he thinks, and they’ve never really needed words to articulate anything they’ve felt. It comes with knowing each other - for  _ too long _ , Koushi thinks mournfully - and he wonders how he could ever have been so blind and cowardly.

Maybe it’s not a confession.

But it’s a start.

Koushi smiles at Daichi, and it’s all teeth and sparkling eyes, colour high on his cheeks as a sunrise dawns between their fingers, drawing them together.

Daichi smiles back, and his grip is firm and sure.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Sorry I get side-tracked a lot.  
> (everything I begin, I will finish.)  
> Let me know what you think!


End file.
